M HKA Ensembles

18 February 2022 - 15 May 2022

For nearly two decades, artist Anthea Hamilton has developed a complex practice that spans sculpture, installation, film, and performance. Her work is characterised by devotional creativity, positivity and flexibility, unexpected research trajectories, highly visual aesthetics, cross cultural interests, interdisciplinary modes of production, and collaborative dynamics. Hamilton dives into the meandering history of visual and cultural production, using her eye as a both subjective and productive lens through which to view (and recreate) the world. Her installations propose an alternative and fragmented reality where gender roles, sexualities, domestic life and the traditions of different cultures are no longer seen as established clichés but as fluid notions.

Using the “mash up” as her method, she filters and assesses elements culled from the present and recent past of fashion, art, food, nature, design, architecture, and pop culture. She then resituates what we might otherwise consider familiar or comforting tropes and motifs in order to sidestep obvious and hegemonic meanings. To do this, the artist uses diverse techniques and materials such as digital prints, galvanised steel, and bespoke woven fabric or blown glass, drawing on both high tech and craftsmanship, moving without restraint from low to high, classic to pop, hip hop to art nouveau. Hamilton’s practice relies on a strong belief in cohabitation, complexity and, by extension, imagination, positing the artworks’ ambiguity as a means to constantly challenge our perceived realities.

Mash Up is the first major survey exhibition of works by Anthea Hamilton, and is therefore the first opportunity to share an in-depth reading and articulation of the artist’s practice, whilst also opening up new perspectives and interpretations. The exhibition comprises no less than seventy works created by the artist throughout her career, alongside a series of new works, a performance, and exhibition-specific situations. While a survey, Mash Up was a dynamic and creative process, allowing space and time to reframe, juxtapose works and assess the artist’s practice.

Curator: Anne-Claire Schmitz

Weekly performances take place on Saturdays in the exhibition spaces for the full duration of the exhibition.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a substantial monographic publication co-published by M HKA and Triangle Books. Commissioned texts by Cédric Fauq, Milovan Farronato, Anthea Hamilton, Anne-Claire Schmitz, and Linsey Young. The publication will be available in English and Dutch. Release date: Spring 2022
 

Practical information

Weekly performances on Saturday.

Performers are in the gallery spaces every Saturday between noon and 5 pm. During that period of time, performers choose when they take their breaks, meaning they might not always be present in the space.

In collaboration with DE SINGEL, Antwerp and as part of  Carta 22, a new biennial festival of creation at DE SINGEL 21– 30 April 2022 

 

Artist biography

Anthea Hamilton is a visual artist working across installation, sculpture, film and performance. She completed her studies at the painting departments of Leeds Metropolitan University and the Royal College of Art London in 2000 and 2005 respectively. In 2016, Hamilton was one of four shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize presented at Tate Britain. Anthea Hamilton lives and works in London and is currently a guest tutor at the free, independent art school Open School East, in Margate (UK). 

Anthea Hamilton has exhibited her work internationally. Selected solo exhibitions include: The Prude, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2019); The New Life, Secession, Vienna (2018); A is for... and, am, anxious, adore, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan (2018); The Squash, Tate Britain, London (2018); Love IV (with Nicholas Byrne), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2016); Anthea Hamilton Reimagines Kettle’s Yard, Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, (2016); Lichen! Libido! Chastity!, SculptureCenter, New York (2015); Kabuki, The Tanks, Tate Modern, London (2012); Sorry I’m Late, Firstsite, Colchester (2012); Les Modules, Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); and Gymnasium, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2008). In recent years, she has taken part in multiple group exhibitions including: Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020, South London Gallery, London (2021); The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2020); May You Live in Interesting Times, Biennale di Venezia 58, Venice (2019); La Vie Moderne, 13eme Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (2015) and Burning Down The House: 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2014).

Mash Up follows up on Anthea Hamilton’s participation in Don’t You Know Who I Am? Art After Identity Politics, an important research exhibition held at M HKA in 2014 as a large-scale study of the modes and means by which identity, post-identity, and human subjectivity are being considered by new generations of artists

 

With the main support of

LOEWE

With the support of

AMS digital

Herno

Mildred and Simon Palley

Marc Vandecandelaere

 

Banner image: Installation view, Anthea Hamilton, Mash Up, M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, 2022 © Anthea Hamilton. Courtesy the artist and M HKA. Photo: Kristien Daem 

Hide this description